What strikes me even more is the fact that it was the Librarian of Library of Congress who made this a crime. Seriously? The Librarian? It sort of sheds light on Harvey Silverberg's estimate that people commit three Federal felonies per day -- unwittingly but intent is no longer a factor.
Except that's not how plea deals work. You don't sign off on the agreement and then get 6 mos. It's not that kind of contract. The judge can ignore the prosecutor's suggestion totally. Note the use of the word "blithey" in the following explanation.
Some have blithely said Aaron should just have taken a deal. This is callous. There was great practical risk to Aaron from pleading to any felony..... More particularly, the court is not constrained to sentence as the government suggests. Rather, the probation department drafts an advisory sentencing report recommending a sentence based on the guidelines. The judge tends to rely heavily on that "neutral" report in sentencing. If Aaron pleaded to a misdemeanor, his potential sentence would be capped at one year, regardless of his guidelines calculation. However, if he plead guilty to a felony, he could have been sentenced to as many as 5 years, despite the government's agreement not to argue for more. Each additional conviction would increase the cap by 5 years, though the guidelines calculation would remain the same. No wonder he didn't want to plead to 13 felonies. Also, Aaron would have had to swear under oath that he committed a crime, something he did not actually believe.
Seriously, isn't it written somewhere, "Never try to threaten the guy who's holding the big guns?" It's tactically a bad move.
Actually no. Off the top of my head I can think of several examples and anyone even modestly well versed in history (I'm not) could likely come up with dozens more.
13 colonies | Great Britain Mexico | Spain India | Great Britain East Germany | USSR
Nothing every changes for the better by taking a defeatist attitude.
Exactly. I fail, utterly and completely, to understand how the GP poster and his ilk don't get that. That even if Swartz committed a crime, it wasn't a 50 years in jail type of crime. It was a pay a fine type of crime. One point made in the video was that the 8th amendment bars cruel and unusual punishment. The amended indictment had a 50 year penalty on it. If other crimes were similarly charged, you'd be looking at 20 years for rolling through a stop sign. Death for shoplifting. That, as was Swartz' potential time, is not just cruel...it's assinine.
No, what happened to him was that he was persecuted by the feds beyond any measure of proportionality between his crime and the possible sentence. When fascists destroy people, should we blame the victims or the jackbooted thugs? I vote we blame the MFing thugs.
Watch the video or read the text... It is very easy to comprehend. Enact reforms that "respectable" people suggest. Anonymous does not expect nor wish to be part of the negotiations,
However, in order for there to be a peaceful resolution to this crisis, certain things need to happen. There must be reform of outdated and poorly-envisioned legislation, written to be so broadly applied as to make a felony crime out of violation of terms of service, creating in effect vast swathes of crimes, and allowing for selective punishment. There must be reform of mandatory minimum sentencing. There must be a return to proportionality of punishment with respect to actual harm caused, and consideration of motive and mens rea. The inalienable right to a presumption of innocence and the recourse to trial and possibility of exoneration must be returned to its sacred status, and not gambled away by pre-trial bargaining in the face of overwhelming sentences, unaffordable justice and disfavourable odds. Laws must be upheld unselectively, and not used as a weapon of government to make examples of those it deems threatening to its power.
For good reason the statue of lady justice is blindfolded. No more should her innocence be besmirked, her scales tipped, nor her swordhand guided. Furthermore there must be a solemn commitment to freedom of the internet, this last great common space of humanity, and to the common ownership of information to further the common good.
We make this statement do not expect to be negotiated with; we do not desire to be negotiated with. We understand that due to the actions we take we exclude ourselves from the system within which solutions are found. There are others who serve that purpose, people far more respectable than us, people whose voices emerge from the light, and not the shadows. These voices are already making clear the reforms that have been necessary for some time, and are outright required now.
It is these people that the justice system, the government, and law enforcement must engage with. Their voices are already ringing strong with a chorus of determined resolution. We demand only that this chorus is not ignored. We demand the government does not make the mistake of hoping that time will dampen its ringing, that they can ride out this wave of determination, that business as usual can continue after a sufficient period of lip-service and back-patting.
Not this time. This time there will be change, or there will be chaos...
I voted for Stein -- but the who doesn't really matter. like you, I feel great about the vote because it's better than not voting. The people who just abstain, get lumped in with the people who never could be bothered. But when you vote third party, you show your disdain for the "two" parties in a measurable way. It's not much, but it is something.
It's also better than voting for a candidate for the Republocrat or Demoplican variety -- you may be voting for a lesser evil but the bar has moved so far that "lesser evil" means "insanely evil" -- at some point there is no perceptible difference. I fully realize people want to buy the tripe that Obama is a good guy. He is actually, presuming you thought the same of GWB/Cheney.
People should be free to be irrationally fearful. It is Monsanto's job to convince them not to be. But buying government regs in its favor, while effective in keeping a low profile, will do nothing to assuage that fear but rather, will exacerbate it.
And who knows -- it may turn out to be justified fear. Most grade school teachers don't pour out mercury and let the kids play with it these days (as I recall being allowed to do). Our idea about what is safe changes over time and sometimes with good reason.
You know what, maybe instead of bringing out this offtopic canard about libertarians, you should read the article. It's thought provoking. Like how in the 80s prosecutors would play a game where they prosecute the person not the crime, i.e, pick a famous person like Mother Theresa and find a crime that would put that person in jail, not because they did anything wrong, but because you're such a clever prosecutor. That sounds not like justice, but persecution.
And how is the complaint that the government has made criminal so much stuff so divorced from common sense, entitled to some epithet about libertarians? Everyone should be worried because when everyone can be charged and sent to prison for random things, the government has total tyrannical power. That's an issue only libertarians worry about? I think not.
Read the essay. It's only 6 pages -- takes you a few minutes. Then come back and explain what in there sounded like the ravings of a "my property GTFO" type libertarian. It contains nothing like that all -- not even a hint. Instead it talks about how the decision to prosecute and what to charge is made in a milieu of total immunity without any consequences at all, and how that decision is perhaps the most important part of the due process rights which we are supposed to enjoy, but instead we have absolutely no protection at all when prosecutors decide to get medieval.
The fact that the law is so complex that everybody could be charged and jail for something is definitively true and a major problem. Though I do not see how government involvment is related to any of it.
I don't understand. Who makes the laws? It is the government. If the legal codebase is so large, vague, and complex, that every person commits a Federal felony every day, and the government made that law, how is the government not to blame?
Democracy means that you get the government you deserve.
Democracy means you get the government the majority deserves.
FTFY. Don't claim to know how I vote based on how the majority votes.
You get as much democracy as you can afford, like justice.
FTFY. Don't claim that it matters how you or anyone votes when all sides are owned, and not by the majority. I will agree that the majority are duped into thinking they have a voice though.
That doesn't explain why WalMart, Home Depot, and Motel6 -- all of which have MORE crime than Caswell's property -- get no scrutiny. It comes down to the fact that the Feds will share the money they steal with the local government and that the aforementioned mega-corps have the resources to fight off the Feds.
So, a local government with some prejudice toward Caswell and the poor people he rents to, can basically hire the Feds to steal his property while ignoring bigger issues that go on with other "respectable" businesses.
That makes me even more cynical, not less. Welcome to fascism from the local government to the top. Favored corps get special treatment and everyone else gets fucked.
That's a great article. I was particularly surprised to learn about the civil forfeiture procedure:
In 2009, the 69-year-old owner, Russ Caswell, received a letter from the DOJ indicating the government was pursuing a civil forfeiture case against him with the intention of seizing his family's motel - it was built in 1955 by Russ's father - and the surrounding property. Ms. Ortiz's office asserted that the motel had been the site of multiple crimes by its occupants over the years: 15 low-level drug offenses between 1994 and 2008 (out of an estimated 125,000 room rentals). Of those who stayed in the motel from 2001 to 2008, 0.05% were arrested for drug crimes on the property. *** Mr. Caswell's family-owned and -operated property was worth approximately $1.5 million with no mortgage - making it a perfect target. Without a bank involved, the likelihood of the Caswells' mounting a drawn-out legal defense was miniscule. Through a spokeswoman, Ms. Ortiz's office released a statement at the time of trial on why they were choosing to pursue Mr. Caswell:
"The government believed that this was an important caseâ¦because of the deterrent message it sends to others who may turn a blind eye to crime occurring at their place of business."
Mr. Salzman doesn't buy the message of deterrence. He asserts that just up the street, a Motel 6, Walmart and Home Depot all operate with similarâ"in many cases higherâ"rates of drug crimes on their properties, referencing numbers obtained from the Tewksbury Police Department. *** But those corporations have extensive financial and legal resources, and would put up much more of a fight than a small business owned and operated by a single family. Before a public interest law firm took on his case, Mr. Caswell had already spent over $100,000 and was near bankruptcy.
Right -- after you're bankrupted, your career destroyed, maybe even some time in jail, your conviction gets tossed. Do the Feds give you your life back? Fuck no. It's a lose/lose situation caused by people who lost sight of their job -- to protect people from bad guys, but the Feds are more interested in making everyone a "bad guy" because it means they just have more power. The power of tyranny and we get to suck it up while they enrich their benefactors.
Get off your Smug Horse because that's not how it works -- even with the "six month" plea agreement he could have spent years in jail, maybe decades:
Some have blithely said Aaron should just have taken a deal. This is callous. There was great practical risk to Aaron from pleading to any felony..... More particularly, the court is not constrained to sentence as the government suggests. Rather, the probation department drafts an advisory sentencing report recommending a sentence based on the guidelines. The judge tends to rely heavily on that "neutral" report in sentencing. If Aaron pleaded to a misdemeanor, his potential sentence would be capped at one year, regardless of his guidelines calculation. However, if he plead guilty to a felony, he could have been sentenced to as many as 5 years, despite the government's agreement not to argue for more. Each additional conviction would increase the cap by 5 years, though the guidelines calculation would remain the same. No wonder he didn't want to plead to 13 felonies. Also, Aaron would have had to swear under oath that he committed a crime, something he did not actually believe.
And just how much time could you be threatened with for that real world trespass? Days -- maybe a month or two at most. But apparently for digital trespass, the correct measure is virtually the rest of your life apparently.
Why? I mean seriously why does everything in America have to involve jail. Do you really think that makes us safer? Eventually somebody will do the math -- 35 years for TOS violations, 15 for rape -- and figure that rape looks like a better deal. You know, if your going to do the time, might as well do a crime to fit it. And that ultimately makes us all less safe. That's the problem with Americans' draconian attitudes.
Well, I don't know if I'd go that far. This is a bit roundabout but... I have a white macbook connected to my TV for watching netflix or iTunes movies/TV. It's getting pretty tired, stutters with high def content etc. Last time I wanted to watch a movie netflix didn't have, I rented it through iTunes and downloaded it to my macbook pro because I wanted to watch the hidef version. But it refused to play on my TV because I'm connecting via DVI -- it would only play on the laptop's built in monitor. Then, because it was a rental, I couldn't move it to my old stuttering macbook, or at least by a straightforward method. I was pissed. So I "pirated" it, guilt free mind you as I did pay my $4 to see it, and watched it full screen with VLC.
Anyway, if you could rent movies/vids through google play, and it would play them in hidef over the VGA output, I could definitely see a use for this as a basic TV "tuner" (i.e., great for streaming content -- basically the only way I get TV except for the occasional DVD).
Exactly -- black and white -- it's this kind of thinking that leads to a more dangerous world because when the punishment for shoplifting is death, you might as well commit a murder to ensure you don't get caught. We aren't quite there yet, but we're well on our way. The Feds already kill people for exercising their first amendment rights provided they're Muslims. They seem to hate geeks too so we'll see where this is in ten years.
They may have offered six months, but that doesn't mean he would have only spent six months in jail because the judge can ignore the Prosecutor's agreement and give 5 years per felony. They wanted him to plead guilty to 13 felonies.
Some have blithely said Aaron should just have taken a deal. This is callous. There was great practical risk to Aaron from pleading to any felony. Felons have trouble getting jobs, aren't allowed to vote (though that right may be restored) and cannot own firearms (though Aaron wasn't the type for that, anyway). More particularly, the court is not constrained to sentence as the government suggests. Rather, the probation department drafts an advisory sentencing report recommending a sentence based on the guidelines. The judge tends to rely heavily on that "neutral" report in sentencing. If Aaron pleaded to a misdemeanor, his potential sentence would be capped at one year, regardless of his guidelines calculation. However, if he plead guilty to a felony, he could have been sentenced to as many as 5 years, despite the government's agreement not to argue for more. Each additional conviction would increase the cap by 5 years, though the guidelines calculation would remain the same. No wonder he didn't want to plead to 13 felonies. Also, Aaron would have had to swear under oath that he committed a crime, something he did not actually believe.
It must be really hard to get around in a world when you can only see black and white and nothing else.
In what way does this case parallel a battered spouse situation?
Who had more money: JSTOR/MIT or Defendant? Who had more power: JSTOR/MIT or Defendant? How bruised was JSTOR/MIT by Swartz' actions? What kind of future threat to JSTOR/MIT's physical safety did Swartz represent?
Seriously man -- your comment is a symptom of what's wrong with the Feds -- no sense of proportion, no sense of reality, no sense of fairness. It's either black or white.
But beware -- when you start to lock up people for the rest of their lives based on trivial things, those people might think stuff along the lines of "what the hell, might as well bring a gun and shoot someone if I'm caught making this photocopy of a magazine because if I'm going to do that kind of time, might as well do a crime to fit it."
Slashdot Mirror
What strikes me even more is the fact that it was the Librarian of Library of Congress who made this a crime. Seriously? The Librarian? It sort of sheds light on Harvey Silverberg's estimate that people commit three Federal felonies per day -- unwittingly but intent is no longer a factor.
See myth three: https://secure.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/myths-of-the-criminal-justice-system_n_879768.html
Except that's not how plea deals work. You don't sign off on the agreement and then get 6 mos. It's not that kind of contract. The judge can ignore the prosecutor's suggestion totally. Note the use of the word "blithey" in the following explanation.
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/01/towards-learning-losing-aaron-swartz-part-2
Seriously, isn't it written somewhere, "Never try to threaten the guy who's holding the big guns?" It's tactically a bad move.
Actually no. Off the top of my head I can think of several examples and anyone even modestly well versed in history (I'm not) could likely come up with dozens more.
13 colonies | Great Britain
Mexico | Spain
India | Great Britain
East Germany | USSR
Nothing every changes for the better by taking a defeatist attitude.
Exactly. I fail, utterly and completely, to understand how the GP poster and his ilk don't get that. That even if Swartz committed a crime, it wasn't a 50 years in jail type of crime. It was a pay a fine type of crime. One point made in the video was that the 8th amendment bars cruel and unusual punishment. The amended indictment had a 50 year penalty on it. If other crimes were similarly charged, you'd be looking at 20 years for rolling through a stop sign. Death for shoplifting. That, as was Swartz' potential time, is not just cruel ...it's assinine.
No, what happened to him was that he was persecuted by the feds beyond any measure of proportionality between his crime and the possible sentence. When fascists destroy people, should we blame the victims or the jackbooted thugs? I vote we blame the MFing thugs.
Watch the video or read the text ... It is very easy to comprehend. Enact reforms that "respectable" people suggest. Anonymous does not expect nor wish to be part of the negotiations,
I voted for Stein -- but the who doesn't really matter. like you, I feel great about the vote because it's better than not voting. The people who just abstain, get lumped in with the people who never could be bothered. But when you vote third party, you show your disdain for the "two" parties in a measurable way. It's not much, but it is something.
It's also better than voting for a candidate for the Republocrat or Demoplican variety -- you may be voting for a lesser evil but the bar has moved so far that "lesser evil" means "insanely evil" -- at some point there is no perceptible difference. I fully realize people want to buy the tripe that Obama is a good guy. He is actually, presuming you thought the same of GWB/Cheney.
People should be free to be irrationally fearful. It is Monsanto's job to convince them not to be. But buying government regs in its favor, while effective in keeping a low profile, will do nothing to assuage that fear but rather, will exacerbate it.
And who knows -- it may turn out to be justified fear. Most grade school teachers don't pour out mercury and let the kids play with it these days (as I recall being allowed to do). Our idea about what is safe changes over time and sometimes with good reason.
You know what, maybe instead of bringing out this offtopic canard about libertarians, you should read the article. It's thought provoking. Like how in the 80s prosecutors would play a game where they prosecute the person not the crime, i.e, pick a famous person like Mother Theresa and find a crime that would put that person in jail, not because they did anything wrong, but because you're such a clever prosecutor. That sounds not like justice, but persecution.
And how is the complaint that the government has made criminal so much stuff so divorced from common sense, entitled to some epithet about libertarians? Everyone should be worried because when everyone can be charged and sent to prison for random things, the government has total tyrannical power. That's an issue only libertarians worry about? I think not.
Read the essay. It's only 6 pages -- takes you a few minutes. Then come back and explain what in there sounded like the ravings of a "my property GTFO" type libertarian. It contains nothing like that all -- not even a hint. Instead it talks about how the decision to prosecute and what to charge is made in a milieu of total immunity without any consequences at all, and how that decision is perhaps the most important part of the due process rights which we are supposed to enjoy, but instead we have absolutely no protection at all when prosecutors decide to get medieval.
I don't understand. Who makes the laws? It is the government. If the legal codebase is so large, vague, and complex, that every person commits a Federal felony every day, and the government made that law, how is the government not to blame?
http://www.harveysilverglate.com/Books/ThreeFeloniesaDay.aspx
You get as much democracy as you can afford, like justice.
FTFY. Don't claim that it matters how you or anyone votes when all sides are owned, and not by the majority. I will agree that the majority are duped into thinking they have a voice though.
Leonard Cohen has a song about that. Or at least half of it (from about 2:30):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iels3GLw-zs
FB
FBI
That doesn't explain why WalMart, Home Depot, and Motel6 -- all of which have MORE crime than Caswell's property -- get no scrutiny. It comes down to the fact that the Feds will share the money they steal with the local government and that the aforementioned mega-corps have the resources to fight off the Feds.
So, a local government with some prejudice toward Caswell and the poor people he rents to, can basically hire the Feds to steal his property while ignoring bigger issues that go on with other "respectable" businesses.
That makes me even more cynical, not less. Welcome to fascism from the local government to the top. Favored corps get special treatment and everyone else gets fucked.
You are apparently unaware of FISA and the TOS agreement between Americans and their government, specifically, Amendment 4 of the Bill of Rights.
Here are some links to help get you up to speed:
FISA: http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01/16/redacted-fisa/
AT&T and NSA's laptop in a closet on everyone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
Retroactive immunity for Telecoms: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111230/00522317232/retroactive-immunity-govt-warrantless-wiretapping-deemed-constitutional-suit-against-govt-lives.shtml
4th Amendment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
That's a great article. I was particularly surprised to learn about the civil forfeiture procedure:
http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/01/17/carmen-ortizs-sordid-rap-sheet/
Problem is, 50% of the country LIKES it this way, and 25% doesn't give a shit.
Right -- after you're bankrupted, your career destroyed, maybe even some time in jail, your conviction gets tossed. Do the Feds give you your life back? Fuck no. It's a lose/lose situation caused by people who lost sight of their job -- to protect people from bad guys, but the Feds are more interested in making everyone a "bad guy" because it means they just have more power. The power of tyranny and we get to suck it up while they enrich their benefactors.
Get off your Smug Horse because that's not how it works -- even with the "six month" plea agreement he could have spent years in jail, maybe decades:
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/01/towards-learning-losing-aaron-swartz-part-2
And just how much time could you be threatened with for that real world trespass? Days -- maybe a month or two at most. But apparently for digital trespass, the correct measure is virtually the rest of your life apparently.
Why? I mean seriously why does everything in America have to involve jail. Do you really think that makes us safer? Eventually somebody will do the math -- 35 years for TOS violations, 15 for rape -- and figure that rape looks like a better deal. You know, if your going to do the time, might as well do a crime to fit it. And that ultimately makes us all less safe. That's the problem with Americans' draconian attitudes.
Well, I don't know if I'd go that far. This is a bit roundabout but ... I have a white macbook connected to my TV for watching netflix or iTunes movies/TV. It's getting pretty tired, stutters with high def content etc. Last time I wanted to watch a movie netflix didn't have, I rented it through iTunes and downloaded it to my macbook pro because I wanted to watch the hidef version. But it refused to play on my TV because I'm connecting via DVI -- it would only play on the laptop's built in monitor. Then, because it was a rental, I couldn't move it to my old stuttering macbook, or at least by a straightforward method. I was pissed. So I "pirated" it, guilt free mind you as I did pay my $4 to see it, and watched it full screen with VLC.
Anyway, if you could rent movies/vids through google play, and it would play them in hidef over the VGA output, I could definitely see a use for this as a basic TV "tuner" (i.e., great for streaming content -- basically the only way I get TV except for the occasional DVD).
Exactly -- black and white -- it's this kind of thinking that leads to a more dangerous world because when the punishment for shoplifting is death, you might as well commit a murder to ensure you don't get caught. We aren't quite there yet, but we're well on our way. The Feds already kill people for exercising their first amendment rights provided they're Muslims. They seem to hate geeks too so we'll see where this is in ten years.
They may have offered six months, but that doesn't mean he would have only spent six months in jail because the judge can ignore the Prosecutor's agreement and give 5 years per felony. They wanted him to plead guilty to 13 felonies.
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/01/towards-learning-losing-aaron-swartz-part-2
It must be really hard to get around in a world when you can only see black and white and nothing else.
In what way does this case parallel a battered spouse situation?
Who had more money: JSTOR/MIT or Defendant?
Who had more power: JSTOR/MIT or Defendant?
How bruised was JSTOR/MIT by Swartz' actions?
What kind of future threat to JSTOR/MIT's physical safety did Swartz represent?
Seriously man -- your comment is a symptom of what's wrong with the Feds -- no sense of proportion, no sense of reality, no sense of fairness. It's either black or white.
But beware -- when you start to lock up people for the rest of their lives based on trivial things, those people might think stuff along the lines of "what the hell, might as well bring a gun and shoot someone if I'm caught making this photocopy of a magazine because if I'm going to do that kind of time, might as well do a crime to fit it."